XXVII David’s Children
I
November was half gone when Judith wrote to David, the letter she had yearned to write, weeks ago:
“We are on the eve of victory, the great spiritual victory that I know means more than anything else to you. Eileen puts in four hours a day practicing. This evening she is giving a recital at the church Mrs. Ramsay’s mother attends. She is a great favourite in Rye, where the story of her tragic widowhood first stimulated interest. I know, father, how distasteful this kind of subterfuge is to you; but Lary agrees with me that it is necessary. As yet no one suspects. But we must plan a long way ahead.
“I have it all arranged, even to the wording of the announcement cards I hope to send out, some time next July. But I shall not dare to show myself in Springdale for another year. There are too many experienced mothers, who would know whether a baby was three weeks or three months old. I could not conceal the telltale marks. I don’t know what a baby ought to look like!
“Don’t say anything about this to Lary’s mother. She would only worry, and she might do something, inadvertently, to spoil all our planning. Lary would like to have us accompany him when he makes his next business trip to Springdale. It is perfectly safe, as far as Eileen is concerned, I assure you. I do so want you to hear her play. It is not merely technique. I can fairly hear her soul grow. She is having her growing pains, but they are good for her. She never speaks of the ordeal that is before her, and for a week I thought she had forgotten it. When she brought me an exquisite little garment she had made, every stitch by hand, I knew I was mistaken.
“Professor Auersbach sees a great career for her. The strain in her nature that will militate against high artistic success, such as he hopes for, is her salvation now. She rebounds from disagreeable things with the resiliency of a rubber ball. Lary doesn’t want her to be famous. He only wants her to grow into a good woman. It would make you happy to see the little intimacy that is growing up between them. She doesn’t at all see in him the demigod he is to me; but I had the advantage of seeing him first through Theodora’s eyes. Tell her how I miss her, and give her a big hug from her Sister Judith.”
II
David put the letter away in the safe, with his few priceless possessions. He wanted to see his children—the two whose likeness to him had been a cause for half humorous apology or bitter reproach. He walked home from the office, lost in a flood of incoherent longing. If only Lavinia had never been kind! There was to be a concert in the college chapel on Thanksgiving evening. Perhaps Eileen could play in public. His soul revolted at such philandering with the truth; but he had taught himself to make peace with the powers that were stronger than his will or his ability. He quickened his step. He would offer the suggestion to Vine.
“It’s just the thing. I’ll go right over and tell Mrs. Henderson about it! The women of Springdale will remember the date—if anything should ever leak out. Eileen is built like the Trenches. I remember, your sister Edith was at church the Sunday before little Buddie was born—and when he came, it was a complete surprise. Nobody suspected anything.”
David covered his face with his hands. His wife’s bald physical view of Eileen’s soul-tragedy filled him with loathing. At long intervals, in the years that were gone, she had forced him to look within the steel-girt casket of her being, and always he had turned away horrified eyes—to restore as best he might the priceless jewels of his imagining. Could he censure his daughter because she had believed in Hal Marksley, to her hurt? How had he judged the one he loved, the woman he had given Eileen for a mother?
He put the thought aside as wickedly disloyal. Vine was the mother of his children. She had taken him, a simple-hearted boy with no ambition beyond the making of beautiful furniture, and she had made of him a successful business man. He could no longer make beautiful things. His fingers had lost their sure touch. But he had given his children the cultural advantages his own boyhood had lacked, and he had laid by enough to care for his family, if he should be taken. He had not been happy. He knew, all at once, that he had not been happy. He had never thought of it before. Still, what right had mortals to demand happiness? Had Vine been sympathetic, he might never have risen above the rank of a carpenter. His children would have toiled with their hands, to measure the stolid level of Bromfield or Olive Hill. It was Vine, with her far-seeing eyes and her two-edged tongue, who had made Lary’s achievement possible, who had given Sylvia the satisfaction of a marriage to her liking. It was patent that Sylvia, at least, was satisfied with her lot.
His eyes turned inward, he began to take stock of his children. Bob and Isabel were in heaven. The acts of God were not to be challenged. Lary had periods of morbid brooding, when life looked worse than worthless. It would be different, now that he had a wife to love him ... a wife who saw in him a demigod. Such devotion had stimulated him to greater endeavour than he had deemed worth while. It might not have worked that way with Lary’s father ... if he had had a wife to soothe and admire him. He might have been too happy to exert himself. He could not be sure.
The very qualities which had won Judith were fostered by Vine’s determination to send Larimore to Cornell. Just why Cornell, David had no means of knowing. Lary had not gone to Bromfield for any of his vacations. So the proximity of the old home town had nothing to do with it. With all his cultural charm, he might not have won Mrs. Ascott, had there been no strong incentive to action. He was inclined to drift, to shun the crass grip of reality. His happiness had been thrust upon him, because of Eileen’s drastic need.
Theodora was too young to be estimated with any degree of finality. As she was, so had Vine Larimore appeared to him when, as a boy, he had looked upon her with yearning eyes. In the after years Vine had been the prototype of Sylvia. She might have bargained better with her beauty—as Sylvia had bargained. What had prompted Vine to the breaking of that other engagement? She had told him, times without number, that he had won her—against her better judgment—by his persistent devotion ... had taken her by storm, and had thereby driven his rival to a hasty and ill-starred marriage. How could he have taken any woman by storm? He felt a little foolish pride in the thought that for one rash moment he had been bold.
He once heard his wife counselling Sylvia, when she was on the point of marrying for pique, an elderly widower in the college faculty. She could afford to swallow Tom Henderson’s neglect, Vine had said, if thereby she might some day step into Mrs. Dr. Henderson’s shoes. But Sylvia was in no need of advice. She would always make the best of her situation—glamour it over with a value calculated to inspire envy in the minds of her friends. It would have been the same, had she occupied a three-room cottage in Olive Hill, with miners’ wives for her social equals. She was developing into a snob. David had not known the meaning of the word until he felt it in Sylvia, that summer.
He turned for relief to Theodora, the one who was still plastic. His mind had climbed awkwardly over Eileen. He must do his work, and a father could not contemplate that catastrophe and live. Theo understood him, as none of the others did. She had rejoiced with him in the seven weeks of his belated honeymoon, and she sorrowed with him in the bitterness of the aftermath.
III
“What in the world is the matter with you? Have you gone stone deaf? I have spoken to you three times, and you haven’t turned a hair.” He was aroused from his musings by Vine’s raucous voice.
“I suppose my mind was wandering. What do you want, dear?”
“What were you thinking?” Her eyes were dark with suspicion.
“I—I believe I was thinking about old Selim, the saddle horse ... you know, Vine, that Dr. Schubert used to ride when the roads were too muddy for the buggy. And what sore places the saddle would make on the poor old fellow’s back—and how the sores would turn into kindly calluses after the saddle had been worn a few weeks. It was taking the saddle off, and putting it back on again, that made the new sores. It would be better never to feel relief from the calloused places than to have to harden them all over again.”
“Yes! I wish I had never gone to Bromfield. Not that the trip didn’t benefit my health wonderfully. But we wouldn’t be in all this trouble if I had stayed at home. And the worst of it isn’t Eileen, either. I had to give in to let Larimore marry that grass widow. That’s the part that can’t be so easily undone.”
“Vine!” David Trench towered his full height, his face stiff with indignation. “Have you no decency, no gratitude, no human kindness in your heart? For shame, to let such words pass your lips!”
Lavinia laughed, a strangled, empty giggle, while the red crept up her neck.
“I was only joking. Larimore says I have no sense of humour. I think you are the one who can’t see a joke.”
“I can’t see a joke in things that are not to be joked about. Judith is a noble woman and she has saved you from disgrace. We are the last people in the world who have a moral right to bring up her past. We all make mistakes, even you—”
“I made the mistake of my life when I married a man who always sides against me, no matter what comes up.” She began to weep loudly.
IV
David was wont to coax and comfort until the storm was over; but this time he put on his hat and left the house without a word. When he returned at dinner time the sky was serene and the atmosphere almost balmy. Lavinia kissed him on both cheeks and turned to pick a thread from his coat with wifely care. Her lips wore a satisfied smirk.
“It’s all fixed. I had the luck to run into a meeting of the committee at Mrs. Henderson’s, and they want Eileen to play three numbers. I have written Judith to get her the finest dress in New York—not to mind the cost—and to send the titles by return mail. I’m going to give a big reception, Friday afternoon.”
David smiled wearily. Another whirlpool in his domestic stream had been navigated, safely. Before him lay a week of tranquillity. Vine was always amiable, with some such absorbing task in prospect.